Psychoanalysis and Identity

Nothing is so characteristic of psychoanalysis as the feelings which the patient develops for the analyst. They are apt to be intense, and often they are strikingly at variance with the reality of the analyst's behavior, manner, appearance, and ability. They may be either positive or negative in quality. Analysts are generally more active in analyzing negative reactions than positive ones, however, and hence analysis is largely characterized by feelings of veneration and gratitude. “No one else could possibly understand me so well as you”; “You sense the meaning of what I say almost before the words have crossed my lips”—such expressions are commonplace. All analysts know that various of their colleagues are blundering and incompetent, and do not hesitate, in private, to say so; but patients, who are in a uniquely favorable position to judge, usually fail to see the obvious. Indeed, if analysts were rated according to depositions taken from patients currently in a state of positive feeling, one would find the profession to be miraculously free of mediocrities. Each and every analyst would prove to be a superb craftsman, the very best in the field, and each and every patient would be uniquely fortunate in having chanced to become a patient of that one analyst best able to understand him. By his friends and his wife an analyst is seen to have a full measure of shortcomings; but by his patients he is perceived as a masterpiece of wisdom, tact, wit, and kindness. When analyst and analysand are of different sex, these feelings are usually augmented by elements of sexual and romantic yearnings. The propensity to idealize the analyst is not a function of ordinary gullibility;